Wherever you are right now, take a look around. Base metals are all around you, sometimes hidden, sometimes visible, but always there. We've been building our societies with metals for more than 10,000 years, and now we're on the point of change to a fossil-free future. We're relying on base metals to get us there because the amount of metals needed for new cleaner solutions is simply more than for traditional ones. As we electrify industries, more and more base metals will be needed. That places a huge responsibility on us, Europe's largest base metals company. That's why we've reviewed our purpose, our vision, and our values so that we all know why we're here, what we want to achieve, and the values we work by. Today, our purpose is to provide the metals essential to improve society for generations to come.
Our vision, that's where we want to be as a company, the most climate-friendly and respected metal provider in the world. Our values, having the courage to challenge existing ways, speak up for what's right, take initiatives. We're working on fossil-free mining right now, and we're getting there. Care for each other, for the way we mine, the environment around us, for our carbon footprint. Responsibility, delivering on our promises, taking responsibility for our actions, for the planet, and for each other. The world needs a sustainable future, and we at Boliden are needed to make that happen.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to welcome you to Boliden's 2022 Capital Markets Day. My name is Olof Grenmark, and I'm Head of Investor Relations. I will also be the moderator during today's sessions. When I say a warm welcome, I of course mean a warm welcome to you all here in the audience here in Stockholm, but also to all of you that are listening in and watching us on the web. Once again, a warm welcome. At Boliden, we always take safety first, so it's my job to take today's safety session. In case of an emergency, we have three emergency exits here. Two are at the end of the room, and one is to my left-hand side here. At the reception, we have all the safety gear you can imagine.
In case of an emergency, if we were to go out of this room due to this, we have a gathering place just outside here at Grev Turegatan 6. We have a busy agenda today, but we do have some deadlines. We're already underway, but we will, of course, have a coffee break, very important in Sweden. During that coffee break, we will have an exhibition. We will show you how we're underway to get our first fossil free mine in Kristineberg in the Boliden area. Something we're quite proud about. We will also have a sharp deadline that we need to end 3:30 P.M. at the latest, because we're very glad that many of you will follow us this evening via a chartered plane and go and see our nickel plant, our copper and nickel plant in Harjavalta, Finland.
We encourage you to ask questions today. I will lead the questions from that we will get here from Stockholm directly. If you listen in via the web, please ask questions via the question form, and I will see them on my iPad. I will make sure that as many questions as possible get forward to management. We will have a few questions after almost all the presentations, but we will also have a Q&A session at the end with the whole management on scene. Today's team is, of course, our group management, led by our President and CEO, Mikael Staffas. Okay, I think we're ready to go. Mikael Staffas, the President and CEO of Boliden, you're most welcome. The stage is yours.
Thank you, Olof. Good morning, everybody. I should say maybe good lunch or whatever time it is, wherever you're listening from, wherever you are. Welcome from my side as well. It is nice to see you all here again. It's now been 18 months since we last had our Capital Markets Day, and I was standing in very much this spot. The only difference was that there was nobody in the audience at that time. It was all empty in these chairs.
You had to go three years back, and we had a similar event at this very venue where we had a chance to talk together. This is of course an event where the point is that we will give you some news and some updates of where we're standing, but it's also an educational event where you are allowed to ask questions to get clarification about what we are doing. I would also like to encourage you all to ask the questions as Olof already talked about. Now, first of all, this is also an event that is not mainly about me. It is very much about my team, and you get a chance to talk to them, those of you who maybe don't meet them that often normally.
They will do the bulk of the presentation and also answer the bulk of the questions. In this presentation, Åsa will after me talk about our vision and also around how to become the most climate friendly, and she will also talk about some news that we have regarding our targets on the CO2 arena. Then we will have Stefan, who will come with the mines, and he will talk about the update on the products that we have and the update on the production that we have around those things, and also the products that we have going forward with the potential new mines that we could have or extensions.
Daniel will come and talk similarly about the smelters, around where we're standing around production and so on, but also talk more about how we're gonna meet the challenge on the CO2 from the smelter side and also around the products that we are developing for the customers. Finally, Håkan will talk about the financial implications around everything that we have spoken about. Now, when you're preparing an event like this, you always like to have something to think about. I have picked, as I usually do, a quote from somebody, and this time it's a quote. By the way, it's also in line with that it's not much new that has happened because this quote happens to be from a book that was published in 1965, which happens to be the year I was born.
This thought was thought about already when I was born, so it's nothing new in that sense. Those of you who are Swedish or Finnish in this room will probably know this very much around the Swedish-Finnish author Tove Jansson and her Moomintroll. The quote that you can see that was already said, well, way too many years ago, is the Moominpappa who said that, "Isn't life exciting? Everything can change all of a sudden, and for no reason at all. The world is full of great and wonderful things for those who are ready for them." Isn't that also right about what we're doing right now? We are in times that are changing, and we don't know exactly which way they are changing, but if we're ready for the change, it will be wonderful times for all of us.
You've already seen the film regarding our values, where they are. This is something that hasn't changed. It's been standing stable for quite a few years now, and we don't intend to change them either. These are values that we perceive to be, in that sense, eternal and will stand around any change that you will see otherwise. We are very clear that we are a metal provider, and we're providing metals not primarily maybe not to make money, but primarily because somebody needs the metals, and somebody needs the metals to do something good, and somebody needs the metals to do something good for many years forward, not just now. That's what we are all about.
We intend to be the best of the ones who're doing the first thing, and we intend to be the one who has the most climate friendly and also most respected provider in the world. We're doing this through care, courage, and responsibility. In going forward and seeing all these changes, I would also claim that Boliden is uniquely well-positioned at this time. We do have the products that most everybody is looking for, and I would say that there's large optimism for the long-term base metals demand out there. Europe is also awakening to the situation that there is, that there is such a big reliance on imports into Europe. As Europe is coming to grips with that can only mean that it's better to be in Europe, which we already are.
We do have already before, I would say, I wrote here, outstanding sustainability performance, good sustainability performance, whatever word you wanna use. We know that we cannot stop where we are, and that's what we're also gonna talk about today, how we are increasing our targets to make sure that we remain ahead of the race. We have a strong financial position. We have a strong balance sheet, and when talking about the strong balance sheet, Håkan will also come back and talk about our energy portfolio, which is also part of having a strong balance sheet in this situation where you're having uncertain times. We have a flexibility, I would say both a mental flexibility, as well as a financial flexibility to be able to handle changes as they come.
Part of this ability to be as agile as you can be. When I usually say we try to be the dancing elephant, we are an industry that is not that easy to change. Given that where we are, we are trying to be as agile as ever possible. A very important part around this is our management governance setup that we have with very independent units that work by themselves. I usually make the point that when we had COVID, we altogether lost maybe one week of production in two of our units, and the other ones didn't lose anything compared to what happened to many other places. People ask me, "So what did you do?" The truth is, very simply, we did lots of things, and we did them differently, and all the 10 places did not do the same thing.
They were all trained to handle situations themselves. Maybe they were more trained from a situation where there could be safety issues or other things that means that you as a management really need to act, and you can never wait for instruction from some headquarters. You need to act all the time. That was transferred very well in the COVID situation, where we had to learn to live with the situation, we had to adapt, and we managed to adapt in a way that was working out relatively well. By the way, those of you who've seen this picture before we notice that there are not really any changes. We have a very stable management situation. We have people who have been around for a long time, very well knowledgeable, but also very good at taking responsibility.
Those of you who come with us to Harjavalta tomorrow will have a chance to meet Timo, or you'll meet him already tonight, and get a chance to meet one of these ten people a little bit more in detail. On the short-term perspective, I've been asked to also make sure that we talk a little bit about the short-term market perspective, and I will do that now so that hopefully when we have the real presentations coming from the team here in a little while, they can focus more around what we're doing and how we're trying to become competitive in the long run. We are, and we acknowledge that there is lots of uncertainty out there right now.
There is a geopolitical situation that is uncertain, inflation development that is uncertain, energy prices that are heading different ways, availability of energy is getting problematic, and we have the Chinese who are playing around in this situation. How this is going to play out, we don't really know. There's clearly possible that also in the short term we could have a more of a downturn than we're seeing right now, but it could also be that it's turning up relatively soon. I also make the point that metal prices, especially if you measure them in our currency, the Swedish krona, are strong and have remained strong, and that also when you look forward into 2023, what we can see we have an improvement of smelter terms that we will get through the year, which is also good for us being a net smelter.
The demand situation is stable for copper, even though we do see some demand decline for zinc right now. That's mainly linked to the energy situation again, where lots of electric arc furnaces in the steel industry are curtailing their capacity, and thus there is less need for galvanization. But how long this will continue, we don't really know. The real news that we have today, which is a new thing, it's our new targets that we set up regarding climate and regarding CO2. These targets, I will just present very quickly, and I will then leave the word for Åsa. The targets that we do have and that we've had so far have served us very well, and you know that we've had a target of reducing 40% to 2030 base year 2012.
We're now doing a very slight little tweak on this target. It's still 40% reduction Scope 1 and 2 to 2030, but the base year is no longer 2012, it's 2021. Flip two numbers. This basically means that we're doubling the ambition because the 40% out of the 40% we had in the old target, we had done roughly 20%, so we had 20% left for the up to 2030, now we have 40%. That's all going to be doable. We will hear more about exactly what we're doing around it. We also are adding targets throughout the value chain. We are adding Scope 3 targets that we haven't had before. It's of course a little bit nervous to put out targets on things that you don't really control because you don't control your suppliers fully.
We have indirect control of our suppliers, and we feel very strongly about adding a new target with 30% reduction of CO2 in the value chain upstream from us in our Scope 3. We have also applied to get these targets approved by the Science Based Targets initiative, which we also feel very hopeful about. With this quick introduction, I'd like to introduce to all of you Åsa, who runs sustainability for Boliden. Åsa, please come on and talk more about what we're going to do.
Thank you, Mikael. I'm also very happy to be here today, and I'm happy to be here to talk to you about sustainability and to talk to you about our new climate targets as well. Our vision, as you saw in the film and as Mikael also talked about, is to be the most climate-friendly and respected metal provider in the world. To be able to reach that vision, continuing to be a sustainability leader is of course crucial, and therefore we have raised the bar, and we have set new targets, and I will talk to you about them more in detail. I will also cover some other sustainability topics in my presentation. Sustainability, when we talk about that, it is totally integrated in our business strategy.
It's care for people, it's care for environment, and it's care for society, and it has a very strong link to value creation. Let's start with our people. Care for people and creating the workplace of tomorrow is, of course, of highest importance. At Boliden, as we heard already in the beginning, Olof said, health and safety always comes first. We are proud of being unique in this global industry of being fatality-free for 14 years now. Unfortunately, there are fatalities happening still, quite often on a yearly basis in this industry. We have been focusing also on our high-risk incidents.
Those of you who remember from our last Capital Markets Day, at that time, we had reduced the risk class three, the highest risk incidents, with 50%, and we have continued since that to decrease with another 50%. We are, of course, not happy about still having accidents, and accidents are a challenge, even if they are less severe. Our ambition is, of course, to be accident-free as well. The way for us to become that is, of course, I've been talking to you about this is my third Capital Markets Day here, and we continue the way forward with proactive risk management to ensure that we learn from the best. We have many, many areas, department sites within Boliden that are really high performers when it comes to safety.
We learn from them, we share experience, and we continue to learn also from the outside world. Of course, with having the best available technology integrated in Boliden, that also ensures a safe environment. Vision, purpose, and values is extremely important also for safety performance. The right behaviors will increase safety. The right behaviors will also strengthen our leadership, and by that, empowering our people. Our vision, as you've heard several times already, is of course really important to ensure that all the people we have are involved in the strategy implementation. We know why we exist and where to go. This, of course, also increases our ability to attract, to retain, and to develop the people for the future.
We all know that that is a challenge, not only for us, but for many industries, to ensure that we have the right competencies and skills for the future. Care for people is one part. Care for environment and the climate is another important area, and here we come into our more ambitious climate targets. For us to be able to reach our vision, and also very important for us to inspire others in this industry, we have set the new targets. Our current target, as Mikael talked about, has been in place for many years. We have come approximately halfway when it comes to that target with the initiatives that we have implemented. What we're doing now with our new CO2 targets is that we are going from an intensity to an absolute target.
We are going from a base year of 2012 to the new base year, 2021. We are adding a Scope 3 target, which we have not had before, and we're also introducing product intensity targets. As you have also seen in our published press release, and as Mikael said, we have also now, as we are in line with science-based targets with this new target setting, sent in the application for that. Before I go into details around these targets, let me just remind you of our strong competitive position that we already have. Last capital markets day, we launched, first in the industry, our two low-carbon products, the Low-Carbon Copper and the Low-Carbon Zinc. That shows that we are really well-positioned when it comes to carbon footprint on our metals.
Our copper, Low-Carbon Copper, is approximately 1.5 kilos of CO2 per kilo copper, compared to above four as a global average. On the zinc side, it's 1 kilo or less than 1 kilo, compared to almost 4 kilos on the global average. How come we can be as good as we are? We have good access to fossil-free energy. We have world-leading productivity, and we are early adopters of new technology. If we have this in mind, where we are and our current situation, let me then move into our new targets. What are they, what do they mean, and what targets do we now have? We have for Scope 1 and 2.
Scope 1 is the emissions coming from our own productions, our own operations, our own sites. Scope 2 is the emissions coming from the electricity that we use. We will, with the base year 2021, absolute emissions reduce another 40% by 2030. Scope 3, that is a challenge because that is not in our own control. That is upstream emissions coming from the production of the raw material that we source, emissions from the production of other kind of materials that we buy, explosives, for instance, and also transports before coming into our operations. We have set a 30% absolute reduction target on Scope 3. We will do that by working together with our suppliers. We know quite many, we have a huge amount of suppliers.
We know quite many of them, and we will work together with those not having any targets at all or having very low ambitions to help them to increase their ambitions. We will also look into our supplier portfolio to see where we can do changes. We are also monitoring what our suppliers have also, they might be committed to science-based target or they have published their targets. What we see that they have promised is also, of course, included in this. Those Scope 1 and 2 and 3 targets are aligned with science-based targets. We have then also added another target just to show because there are many, and that's really good, that are applying to science-based targets, committed to science-based targets, announcing targets and ambitions targets when it comes to CO2.
To show that we have already a strong position and that we are strengthening that position now, we have added also this product intensity targets, meaning that we have today our Low-Carbon products, but today, approximately 25% of our copper production qualifies for being Low-Carbon, and 20% of our zinc production qualifies for being Low-Carbon. By 2030, we will have 100% on average being on those levels. It's not like we're starting now. We've had the target, and we have had a lot of initiatives ongoing, the last years to come to where we are today. Just to give you a few examples, some of you are already familiar with many of these, but of course, we have completed a lot of things, and we have a lot of things in progress ongoing already.
It's a lot about electrification, but also process improvements, energy efficiency. Both Stefan and Daniel will come back to what we are now working on, what kind of initiatives are in the plans for smelters and mines to be able to reach these new ambitious targets. You will get more details around that. As I said in the beginning, sustainability is not only about safety and climate, even those two are really important things to work on. We are committed not only to continue to be strong in those two areas, also to have strong and world-class sustainability performance in all these areas.
These are examples within people, within environment, within society that we also have in our strategy, in our business plans. We have targets, we have plans in place to also ensure being an attractive employer, the competencies, the skills we need to have the right leadership, to work with biodiversity. That is really, really important also, where we get a lot of attention now around our target setting that we have talked about when it comes to biodiversity, also where we wanna be in 2030. Our vision, we talk about climate-friendly metal provider, but we also want to be the most respected metal provider.
It's really important, of course, to ensure that we have strong ethical behaviors, perform business in an ethical way, to have due diligence processes for human rights, to ensure that we have and listen to all kind of stakeholders in this area, and not least, to also have the same expectations when it comes to our business partners on sustainability as we have on ourselves. That is something that we work really hard with. To summarize, strong sustainability performance will lead to stronger business performance, people management, and value creation for all stakeholders. Our commitment is to ensure that we will be here for another 100 years running a successful business. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much also.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, we start the Q&A session, and we will start here in Stockholm. Who has the first question? Christian Kopfer, Handelsbanken, please.
Thanks for that. If you look at in the steel industry, there is quite a clear message that you know called green steel providers are able to get the premium paid for for carbon-free steel. That's at least what we hear. Now, the question for you is that obviously low carbon products are very good for the environment, but have you seen any willingness from your clients to pay a premium for your low carbon products?
That's a really good question. Thank you so much, and there's a lot of people asking about the premiums, and yes, there are premiums on our low carbon products. It's a very high interest in our low carbon products. They are contracted, and we are getting premiums. We are not on a level today where we can say that it's a huge premium on these products. I am convinced that this is something that will continue to develop. Our base metals are quite in this side of the value chain, and as soon as customers and the end customers starts requiring this, which I am convinced that they will, I see that premiums will start developing. It will also be a requirement, I think, going into the future, whether there's a premium or not. Daniel will also talk a little bit more about our low carbon products in his presentation.
Okay. One more question.
Mm
If I can. On the electrification, you are have-
Yeah
You have a lot of electrification projects in the company, and how do you take into consideration perhaps a complete different energy price environment, especially on electricity going forward as consumption in Sweden and in Europe is, you know, completely escalating? How do you take that into consideration when you're doing your investment projects on this?
Yes. It has been, as Moomintroll also said, or Moominpappa, a very special situation the way we are in, and we have made a lot of simulations and scenario analysis when defining and deciding on these targets that we have, and those targets we are convinced that we will be able to reach them, even though we will have situations that are a bit unpredictable now. When it comes to investments and the cost for ESG related initiatives, they are always integrated into our normal CapEx process. We take this into consideration in an integrated way in all our investments.
Excellent. We had a question from the gentleman over there. Can you please start by stating your name and company name?
Yes. Thank you so much. My name is Gillian Gailliaert, and I work for PGGM. We're an asset manager from the Netherlands. We manage the assets of the Dutch healthcare pension fund , which has over 3,000,000 participants. I had a question about the Scope 3 target because I'm kind of confused. I read that it's specifically for reducing supplier emissions, which would come down to Scope 3 categories, purchase goods and maybe capital goods as well.
Yep.
Am I right that it only covers that part of Scope 3 or the entire Scope 3 emissions?
No, it covers that what we have specified.
All right.
The upstream, Scope 3 part.
Yeah. All right.
Correct
The SBTi criteria does include a scope coverage of Scope 3 in general. What can we expect from the verification process? Do you expect that you will be granted SBTi verification?
As we have also studied, of course, a lot around the requirements and also have been in dialogue with SBTi, we expect these targets to be accepted, and the validation. It's good that you mention it, though we have applied now, but there's a huge line of companies now applying to commit to the SBTi. We expect to see the results from this validation process somewhere Q3 next year.
All right. Very good to hear. Congratulations on the new targets.
Mm.
Very glad to hear those and also to apply for SBTi. If I may, I have a second question, which is about the low-carbon products. Very well to hear that you also have targets on that, and I was wondering about alignment with the EU taxonomy. Because the EU taxonomy, its technical annex, includes screening criteria for aluminum, iron, and steel, but not specifically for copper and zinc. However, there are criteria for the manufacturing of low-carbon technology, which includes key components, which Low-Carbon Copper and zinc would probably be included there. Can these products be labeled as sustainable under the taxonomy criteria as well?
The taxonomy is a topic that we can discuss for a long time. It has been postponed, things that relates to our company and industry, and we are monitoring this all the time, and we are very involved in the development of what will happen. As long as we haven't seen anything yet, it's very difficult to say. I would say that with the SBTi commitment and the way we have been working with this, and our low-carbon products, I think we are very well positioned.
Yeah. All right. Thank you so much.
Excellent. My inbox is almost crashing here. I have many questions, so we should have some questions through over the web as well, one. The first one comes from Morten Enggaard, Jyske Bank. What CapEx is associated to your new CO2 target?
As I try to answer also, I think we will get more financial input later on. Our CO2 investments, ESG-related investments, are integrated in the way we are working with CapEx and investments. It will not be a separate process around this or separate cost investments. They are fully integrated and will be communicated together with our CapEx communication.
And while [crosstalk]
Don't see any major changes there.
While we're on the web, Patrick Jones , JP Morgan, what does your 40% reduction target or your new target imply for recycling volumes?
Us having new climate targets will not change the way we are working with recycling. Yes, recycling is a very important part of our business as it is contributing to circular economy, but how recycling will develop going forward is not really related to this target as we see in our plans.
Yeah. Finally, we have Jason Fairclough, Bank of America, and it is, how does the old and the new emission targets fit together? Will you keep the old ones?
I would say that the old ones, they have been good, and as I said, we have reached halfway. These new targets are more ambitious, so that is what we are now to follow and to monitor and to deliver on. That is also what we are going to communicate and report. We will keep track on our old target as well, just to see how we develop towards those old targets. We will have that information, but the communication and reporting will of course be now for our new targets.
Okay. I think we have time for a couple of more questions here from the audience. We have Viktor Trollsten, Danske Bank, please.
Thank you so much. Maybe just clarifying, it was an absolute reduction target.
Yes
Of 40%. Just think
Yes
You know, how does that fit with your, let's just say, expansion plans for this coming decade? I guess, you know, Tara Deep within the coming eight years would be difficult in terms of reducing by 40%. Or how do you think about, you know, expansions in relation to an absolute target?
All known expansions are included in our calculations in the target setting.
Known to us or known to you?
I will hand that over to someone who feels that they want to ask that. Of course, we have considered expansions.
Yeah
In this target setting as we know that we are developing this industry and this company. Yeah.
That's clear. Thank you.
We have the final question. Yes, from you there. Yes, please. The woman there. Yes, please.
Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. My name is Yu Yan. I'm from Bank of America. My question is a follow-up on the premiums. From the Scope 3 targets, would you kind of foresee the premiums on those low-carbon suppliers be setting pressures on margins and essentially increase your cost of goods of raw materials? Thank you.
Thank you. It is difficult to see how premiums in the whole value chain will develop, but I am sure that we can handle that also in a profitable way going forward.
We had a final question from the gentleman at the back there. Yes, please.
Thank you. Ioannis Masvoulas from Morgan Stanley. Couple of questions from me. The first around the low-carbon metals. You talk about copper, you talk about zinc. When are we gonna hear about nickel? Maybe the second question around Scope 3 and the 30% reduction target. Does it mean that you could move away from some of your suppliers? Could that lead to a higher cost of running your business?
Okay, thank you. Two very good questions. These are the last ones. I think it's a good way also to finalize this session. First, if I answer the first one related to nickel. Yes, we have two Low-Carbon products today in our Low-Carbon portfolio, but of course, we are working with calculations around our other metals and products as well, and Daniel will talk about our nickel. I will leave that for him. We will continue to include things in our portfolio going forward.
The last question around Scope 3, yes, it might be so, or I think definitely it will be so that we are now in our supplier portfolio really looking into also this dimension with the CO2 emissions when choosing which supplier to continue to work with.
Okay. Åsa, thank you very much. We will welcome you back when it's time for the panel session. Now, ladies and gentlemen, it's time for our next speaker. It is time for Mr. Romedahl, President Boliden Mines. Welcome.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Olof. It's a great pleasure to be here again talking about Boliden Mines, and I think it has happened quite a lot since last CMD. Some of the highlights since last we met is that we have delivered on the three expansion projects, Aitik 45, Kevitsa 9.5, and Garpenberg 3,000,000 ton. This has been done during a quite difficult time with the pandemic as well as disturbance on global supplies. I think that the teams in all our business units have done a great job. You can see on the upper left graph how the throughput have developed over time. That's our production numbers. We have also completed the reclamation of Kylylahti mine site.
The mill in Kylylahti is still in care and maintenance, and we have investigated what to do with the cobalt metal that we have in one of our tailings ponds. We haven't decided what to do with it yet, but the result from our testing is promising. We have also decided to finalize the exploration around Kylylahti and Outokumpu area. Another big thing that have happened is the implementation of Global Industry Standard for Tailings Management. We have upgraded our organization as well as our competence in this area, and we have investigated the tailings itself in all our operating facilities, basically based on to try to figure out if we have a potential for static liquefaction.
We have also conducted investigation of the ground around our tailings facility, and that have led to, as you know, investment in Aitik. I will come back to that later on. That's not the only thing that we have done when it come to tailings. We have initiated also research and development program looking into what can we do more with our tailings. We have quite good potentials around here. But also how can we bring in value when we are closing down a mine site. This is things that is in a bit long term, but we are doing that, and we have initiated that lately. If we look at the graph to the lower left, you can see the financial performance from the mines.
The last year is actually the best performance we have ever done in Boliden Mines. That's quite good. You know, all you know that it's mainly maybe based on external factors, but the thing that we have increased our production is part of that as well, of course. Mikael and Åsa talked about CO2 initiatives. In the mines, we can actually do a lot. We have done a lot, and we can continue to do more. We can say that we have the big thing with the CO2 reduction that we will do going forward will be seen after 2025. The electrification on the ground, that's quite in a good pace, and we are doing good things here now.
As well as the suppliers, they have been able to develop the battery equipment at a higher pace, and it will be possible to implement them when they come. On the lower right picture, you see the truck that we use to transport ore from Renström to the mill in Boliden. This is a battery 74-ton truck. The tramming distance here is 15km . The company who have delivered this truck, they will continue to develop it, and they will start to do serial production of it. That brings in positive possibilities for both Boliden area as well as Garpenberg and Tara to actually also get electrified when it comes to transportation above ground. That's great, and this is a quite high pace in this development for the moment. That's good.
In the open pits, you know that we have worked with our electrification with a trolley system in both Aitik and Kevitsa. We will continue to increase the use of the trolley systems. In the long run, we need a battery solution for big trucks for open pits. We are discussing with both Komatsu and Caterpillar on the need. We need that to be on the market within the next three to five years because that's the big thing for us to reduce our CO2 emissions going forward. I do think that this look promising because both of those companies are really head on to try to get that in their development route. The last bullet on this slide is actually very interesting. We have tried out a new kind of explosives.
These explosives have a very low footprint when it comes to CO2 emission. The best thing with these explosives is that this is nitrate-free. From an environmental point of view, that's actually fantastic. This, ladies and gentlemen, can be a game changer for the industry going forward. It will take some time. We have tried it on a blast in the size of a development size. This can be something to really keep the eye on. That bring me in to our productivity improvements going forward. We will go up in production in Garpenberg to 3,300,000 ton. We will stabilize the production in Kevitsa at 10,000,000 ton. Our technical team, as well as the team in Aitik, have prepared themselves for implementation of the AHS system.
That will be a very important fight in going forward when we increase the waste rock production from 24. The same technical team have also working to develop an agnostic positioning system for underground mixed fleet. This is like creating a safety bubble around a person as well as around a machine, so they can coexist in the same working area going forward. When we manage to do that, optimization can be really good for improved productivity. This is a really interesting thing. The last bullet on this slide, robot charger. This explains more or less how Boliden always work with technical development to become better as a mine operator. The good thing with this robot charger, this project is done with a few suppliers.
The good thing with this is that this can actually charge round with non-electric technique and not like the competitors with electronic capsules that needed to be done for detonators, electronic detonators. The non-electric is much cheaper. The really good thing with this is actually that this is a missing piece. When this is in place and we can do this remote, then all the sequence in the drift cycle can be done remotely. The next step will, of course, be optimization. That will take some years before we are there, but this is the way Boliden always have worked with development. We will have a full-scale equipment in the end of this year. That brings me into the next success area for Boliden Mines, and that's our exploration.
We will continue to focus on the area where we already exist in the Nordic countries in Northern Europe on the left, right side. The lower left diagram that I talked about last CMD as well. I think it's time to repeat it a bit because this is a very good graph. The light blue color staple is what the reserve life for our operation was 2011. The dark blue is a reserve life 2021. In between that, we have mined out 10 years of production, and we have still been able to increase the reserve life of our operation. That done basically based on good exploration as well as the way we are doing our expansion projects. We will continue with this kind of strategy. We will start to focus more around the Kristineberg area.
Rävliden is a part of the Kristineberg mine, as you know, but we think that we can find more. We have been there for a very, very long time, but now we change a bit how we are actually addressing our exploration going forward. The same goes for Garpenberg, where we do have a long reserve life. Here we want to open up, unlock potential towards depth. If we are successful with this exploration, then Garpenberg might be something else in the future that will take some year. This is the key. We will also, as Mikael mentioned in the beginning, get more focused on nickel exploration. We have already started to do that, but we will accelerate that in 2023. We have good potential around Nautanen and to extend the resources around Nautanen.
Now, that bring me into Aitik. Around the graph to the lower right, there you can see the development of the grades over the years, as well as the grade going forward. That's a thick line here. That we are mining under the average grade, which is a dotted line, some years. That have to be like that, otherwise it will not be an average. We are going into such a period now. The dam investment in Aitik, SEK 5 billion, is done to stabilize our tailings facility constructions around the tailings dam. This investment is have a good pace. It's a high pace, actually. We are delivering on function, cost, and time. The reason why we are doing this is that the investigation of the static liquefaction say that we can't say that it will not happen.
We have to calculate with that in our calculations. As well as we could see from the investigation on the ground, that your technical investigation, that we do have a layer that is weaker than the main part of the support ground. That's why we need to do it now. I mean, the tailings pond today is about 70 meters high, and that if it should cover the full life of mine, it will be 140 meters high. But the project are in line with what we expected it should be. That's great. Another important thing is that we will increase the stripping from 2024. We have always said that Aitik is a one-to-one mine, meaning one ton of ore, and one ton of waste.
That's not the case every year, of course. Sometimes we are producing more ore than waste, and some period it will be the opposite. From 2024, it will be more waste than ore in Aitik for a period of time. Liikavaara will come into production in mid-2024. We will put in a renewed permit for Aitik, the big one, in February 2026. That have to be granted. That bring us actually over to Ireland and Tara Mines. On the image to the upper right, you can see Tara Mines in brown, you can see Tara Deep in black, and in between those, you have a black line. That's Tara Deep drift. Then you have a vertical black line, and that's actually the position for the ventilation shaft.
You can see the drilling site on the lower picture. A year ago, when we was drilling the pilot hole for the ventilation shaft and hitting the Tara Deep drift as planned, what wasn't planned was a amount of water that we get into through this hole. So we actually had a water flow of 2,000 cubic meter an hour, and that's exceeded our pumping capacity. So we was flooding the tunnel as well as part of Tara Mines. Now we have pumped away the water. Tara Mines is up running on normal production since quite a long time ago, actually. The exploration in Tara Deep drift will start now in this quarter. We have lost one year when it come to exploration on the ground. The exploration on surface haven't been affected by the flooding.
The great thing is, 3D seismic that we have done and the result from that. That take up a few very good promising exploration targets. When I say targets, this means that we haven't drilled towards those targets yet, but it does look promising from the 3D seismic. That will be very interesting to follow and going forward. We have done pre-feasibility study around, Tara Deep as well. Coming up to Boliden area and, the Kristineberg-Rävliden operation. On the image to the upper right, you can see, the Kristineberg mine in gray. You have the, Rävliden ore body in a yellow shade. In between here you have a red line, and that's, actually an existing drift underground. We will start to produce from, Rävliden ore body in 2023.
When we are doing the development of the ore body, we will take the ore through this tunnel and through the old system in Kristineberg. The blue line is the whole new system that's 5,600 meters long. We have done more than 1,500 meters for the moment, and we will continue to develop that, and that will be ready in 2025. That's the time when we will go full fossil free production in Rävliden mine. That will be electrified with trolley and the machine around the scoops and trucks and so on will be battery and trolley run on trolley. We have done the ventilation shaft. That's done. We are doing the construction of the heat exchanger.
That's also a very important part to reduce our CO2 emission. That's done in the end of this year. We are constructing the water treatment plant on the ground. Now that water treatment plant will serve both Kristineberg mine as well as Rävliden ore body. When it come to Strömfors, we still doing a lot of exploration. It's still a exploration project in the early stage. We have done some scoping study, and it's still look promising around this. We haven't done any more resource calculation around Strömfors. That's pending. That will come in the future. Going over to the major permits pending, starting with Aitik. In Liikavaara, we have the environmental permit that's granted.
We need a change of the mining concession, and we wait to get that in the end of this year. We will have addition to the change of the existing permit, and we will put that into application next year. That's basically based on what we are doing around our tailings facility, but it also has to increase the storage capacity for waste rock. That will also change our reclamation plans going forward. In 2026, we need a new permit in February. In Garpenberg, we have put in an application to change the raising method for the dam in Garpenberg, and we hope that we get that granted in the end of this year and beginning of next. In Boliden Area, we need a new permit, a renewal of the permit for Kankberg.
Here we will increase production level to a new production level as well as a new bigger production area, especially in this settlement. In Laver, we get a no from the government, as you know. Here we still have the license for exploration, and we will put in a new application for mining concession before 2024, I would say. Now that leads into what's the focus for us in the mines going forward. The focus will still be on safe and stable production as well as extension opportunities. We will work hard with the activities around CO2 reduction, and new technique will help us to get to a better productivity. We will continue to work with increasing social and legal license to operate.
This is an area that is very important for us. On the local side, we have a good social license to operate, but I think on the national and European level, we need to increase that. Here we really have a good momentum now because Europe can see that they need more metals, and they can also see that they haven't been as proactive that they should be when it come to mining. It's a good momentum in European now, but it will take time before we are there, I guess. With this, thank you for attention and looking forward for your questions. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Romedahl. Who has the question for Mr. Romedahl? Johannes Grunselius, Den Norske Bank.
Yes. Thanks for the presentation. I have a question on the grade curve you were showing us here for Aitik. Thanks for sharing that, by the way. I haven't seen such a great curve for a few years from Boliden, so thanks for sharing. Is that sort of only for Aitik, or should we see what's the impact when you blend in Liikavaara? Just to clarify, is this only for Aitik?
Liikavaara is into that graph.
That's in that graph [crosstalk]. Okay.
That, that's in that graph.
Okay.
We will do the same kind of guiding for as we normally do. We normally just have five quarters is the longest period that we do. When it come to Aitik, we realize that this curve can be good to see for you guys.
Yes. If I understand it right, you have some flexibility on Liikavaara. You can mine out some more in sort of meager grade years, but that's not helping you so much apparently for 2024, 2025, or?
No, it's included, but we'll get up to close to full production in mid-2024 with Liikavaara, and then Liikavaara kicks in. The average grade for this 60,000,000 ton in Liikavaara is about 0.26. That will help. It's the same with Liikavaara. It's you know have your different kind of grades depending on where you are in the mineralization or in the ore body.
Absolutely. Okay. Thank you.
Okay, next question. Adrian Gilani, ABG Sundal Collier.
Thank you. Just to follow up on the Liikavaara deposit question. If we were to see some sort of delay in 2024 on production start there, can you say anything about what the Aitik grade would be excluding that in 2024?
I don't want to go into that and give you that actually. The quantities that we will produce from Liikavaara when it's up to full production over a year is around, let's say seven to a maximum of 15,000,000 tons per year.
Stefan, let's break in with a question from the web. It's from Liam Fitzpatrick, Deutsche Bank, and he says, "Just to clarify, is 2023 the low point for Aitik in terms of grades?
Yeah. I mean, you have to see the curve that we have showed you now on this presentation, and I think you have to try to figure that out from that curve.
Okay. It's up to us to judge.
Absolutely.
Exactly. Okay. We have Ioannis Masvoulas, Morgan Stanley at the back there. Sorry, I didn't see you before. It's too dark down there. Welcome to Stockholm.
Thank you. Again, on Aitik, you mentioned the strip ratio, which is going up from 2024. Can you give us an indication what sort of level we should be expecting and for how many years it's going to remain above one to one?
If we go back and see how we have produced, it has been quite a few years that we have been mining more ore than waste, and that will be the same kind of period that we will have to mine more waste than ore. That goes with the sequence of the pushbacks, of course. That's the reason. The increase we will meet with the AHS system. That's why it's so important to get that into operation in Aitik. We will increase the AHS usage over time to meet these increased production levels.
I guess just to follow up to clarify, so that increased stripping ratio is reflected into your CapEx profile when it comes to maintenance and sustaining CapEx?
Yeah, it will be included in the sustaining CapEx going forward, yeah.
Thank you.
Robert Redin, Carnegie, please. No, no, Robert is here. Thanks.
Yeah, this is on the same topic there. Just a clarification on the increased waste ore production. Will you still have enough capacity with the AHS and so on to put on 45,000,000 tons into the mill, or will the higher waste production impact that?
Our intention is, of course, to do 45,000,000 tonnes every year, and that's the prioritization. Ore always go before waste. It's of course a challenge to increase production in both ore and waste at the same time. We are preparing ourselves as good as we can to make that happen.
All right. Perfect. Thanks.
Okay, I think we have time for one more question from the web and then two more question from the audience. Please remember, I mean, it's lovely to see all these hands, but we will have a panel discussion afterwards, so there will be more room for questions. Coming back, this question is from Jason Fairclough. He works for Bank of America, and he says, "Can you please update us regarding this Swedish concentrate situation, which was a troublesome one some time ago? What's the latest there?
I don't exactly know where it is in the court when it come to the process for Slite. I do know when we have this discussion when it's was up last time that we have a plan B, and our plan B looked like that we will be able to handle that situation. We still have this plan B. I think that we will be able to handle it, handle this situation even if it will be difficult for Slite.
Okay. We have a question from the gentleman there to the left, up there then, and then we have a final one over there. Yes.
Sri from RBC Capital Markets. My question is on the permits. For Aitik, should we expect the waste rock storage permit to come through in 2023? And if it does not, given the higher strip ratio, how should we think about the production impact for Aitik? Thank you.
Sorry, but can you repeat it once again? Sorry.
Sorry, yeah. No worries. It is about the waste rock storage permit for Aitik. If it doesn't come through in 2023, how should we think about the production impact given the strip ratios moving higher as well in the future? Thank you.
Yeah. The reason why we apply for higher waste rock storage is to have some kind of margin up to an increased limit for it. Hopefully, we'll not be needed to use that. But we need it into our plans in a way to get to a better so we don't get into a cul-de-sac when it comes to the waste rock production.
Okay, we had a final question from the gentleman over there. Right there, yes.
Thank you. Emin Eyi from CD Capital. Thank you for your presentation. I think it's a bit of the same theme. I don't know the mines as well as some of my colleagues here, so forgive me for my question, but Aitik looks a very deep mine, a deep open pit. It's only 0.25% copper grade, and you're about to be entering quite a period of capital investment, not only with the project itself, but with your CO2 ambitions, and you have ambitions to use. I like that nitrate-free explosive. We'll look into that. There's clearly more costs there. Is it worth doing all of that work at 0.25%?
Yeah. I think it's fantastic in a way that we can run a mine on those low grades. We get actually visitors from all around the globe, even the big copper mines, asking us, "How do you do this?" We have been able to do the same kind of trick, if I say so, with Aitik for at least the last 25 years, and we will continue to do that. I think Aitik will, with the changes that we are doing now, will be a very solid, stable producer of copper going forward towards the fifties.
Okay, ladies and gentlemen, it's time for our coffee break. Once again, we are proud of our exhibition, the fossil- free mine, that you can see up here. For those of you who listen in to the web, please stay tuned. We will have movies rolling. Finally, we will start 15 minutes past sharp. Welcome back.
Decarbonizing society is important, so how does Boliden calculate its metals carbon footprint? Well, we choose to include everything. Let us explain. We want to take the lead and be an example. We do so by making all-inclusive life cycle assessments of our main metals journey from production to when they leave our gate. We can find the main sources of emissions from cradle-to-gate, and we do this in a transparent way because many methods suggested to calculate carbon footprint in our industry leave room for interpretation and are therefore difficult to compare. For example, the usage of credits and offsets. When using credits, you deduct emissions from one source based on the positive results from another, giving different companies different results. Boliden wants to set a fair and transparent standard for the mining and metals industry to pioneer the use of low-carbon metals.
Since we want to understand and reduce our total emissions, we do not use credits or offsets. We include and analyze all parts, and we've left nothing out when looking at our three scopes. Scope 1. The direct emissions from our mines and smelters. Scope 2. The usage of electricity in our mines and smelters. Scope 3. The emissions from our supply chain, including everything from production of explosives in our mines to emissions from suppliers to our smelters. By doing so, we can obtain data on the emissions for the metals per each scope, making it easier to see where extra efforts must be made. The calculations show that most of the greenhouse gas emissions come from the mining operations. They also show that Boliden's mines and smelters have a low carbon footprint, significantly below the global average. This is just one of our initiatives to contribute to our vision to be the most climate friendly and respected metal provider in the world.
Värmeväxeln i Kankberg har identifierats som den investering som har störst klimatnytta för Kankberg. Den här typen av värmeväxlare finns i drift i Zinkgruvan och i Garpenberg sedan tidigare, men den är aldrig testad i så här kallt klimat. Jag heter Andreas Markström och jobbar som gruvplaneringschef för Kankberg. I den rollen så sammanställer jag både genomförda och förslag till energiförbättrande aktiviteter. Redan i dag så har Boliden väldigt låg energiförbrukning jämfört med övriga gruvföretag i världen. Vi vill minska vår energiförbrukning ännu mer. Vi har utrett värmeväxlare genom årens lopp flera gånger här i Kankberg, men har haft för lite luft upp genom frånluftschaktet. 2020 så byggde vi om gruvans ventilationssystem under jord. Efter den ombyggnationen så skapade vi rätt förutsättningar för att kunna bygga en värmeväxling.
Det började egentligen med att vi har ett behov under vinterhalvåret att värma upp luften som vi skickar ner i gruvan för att undvika att schaktet ska frysa igen. Blev luften varmare i gruvan av dels bergets temperatur och de maskiner som arbetar under jord. Den luften som kommer upp ur gruvan är betydligt varmare. Över frånluftschaktet så håller vi på att bygga en värmeväxling där den varma luften, frånluften upp ur gruvan, korsar tilluften på varsin sida om plattor. Värmen från frånluften överleds till tilluftssidan. Gruvor skapar förutsättningar för att kunna göra den här klimatomställningen. Utan gruvor kommer vi inte kunna få fram tillräckliga metaller för att kunna minska utsläpp och klimatpåverkan i övriga delar i samhället. Tack vare det så är vi en del av lösningen, inte bara ett problem.
Hur återställer man ett landskap efter en gruva brutits klart? Det är en svår fråga med ett komplext svar. För oss handlar det om många olika åtgärder, skräddarsydda för den gruva som ska efterbehandlas. Vid Bolidens nedlagda Långdalsgruva har vi rivit en invallningsdamm vid Håf i Skellefteälven. Den byggdes för att torrlägga en del av älven för att bryta fyndigheten som sträckte sig under vattendraget. Projektet är helt unikt och vi har gjort långtgående åtgärder för att hålla högsta möjliga säkerhet för de som arbetat i projektet, men även för att minimera miljöpåverkan. För att undvika grumling som kan ha en negativ ekologisk effekt har siltgardiner använts. Den järnspont som hållit dammen på plats har dragits upp och i största möjliga mån återbrukats i andra projekt. Vi valde också att maskinerna skulle köra på miljödiesel. Det har sparat 140 ton koldioxid och motsvarar hälften av projektets totala utsläpp
Innan området helt kan återlämnas till allmänheten ska vi sanera vägar och gamla upplagsytor för gråberg. Vi ska beså slänterna mot älven för att motverka erosion. Vi ska också uppföra en grillplats och plantera in fisk i älven. När vi avslutat efterbehandlingen kommer områdets miljö mätas och analyseras inom vårt kontrollprogram för nedlagda gruvor för att säkerställa att våra åtgärder har förväntad effekt. Tanken är att vi människor ska kunna använda den här platsen till rekreation där det tidigare varit en gruva. Vi vill också gynna den biologiska mångfalden så att platsen återigen blir en naturlig del av Skellefteälven.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. I hope you enjoyed the coffee break and our exhibition. By the way, this is a beautiful picture. It is of Daniel Peltonen. The intention was to show this coffee break slide. Maybe we can have that back, this coffee break slide. This one, yes. There it is. You're wonderfully beautiful as well, Daniel. What I was going to say is that this is a beautiful picture of our grand old lady within the Boliden mine system. It is the Kristineberg mine in the Boliden area, and this is the mine where we had the exhibition about. In the Kristineberg extension called the Rävliden, we're aiming to be fossil-free. Once again, that's enough of that, and it's a pleasure for me to announce the next speaker, Daniel Peltonen, Head of Smelters. Welcome.
Thank you very much, Olof. This was, I think the nicest way of presenting someone ever, so let's talk about it later tonight. Anyway, I've been with Boliden now for some three years and enjoying the ride a lot. We are focusing a lot on this culture journey with people, sustainable change in mind. Value-based leadership is highly appreciated for me and to create the workplace where people really thrive. Today, we are, however, going to talk more about what we are really doing in business, and just looking a little bit backwards, we are also in smelters doing great results. We have just three quarters in a row made record high results. We are, as Stefan also said, a little bit helped with the prices and terms.
Market is in our favor, and that is of course a nice thing. On top of that, we also have a great long-term energy strategy within Boliden, thinking about very high electricity prices that our competitors are very much suffering. We have not suffered that much, and this is a very good strength for our business. Since last CMD, we have got the result of the Green Zinc Odda. I will get back to that a little bit more later. We have also started up the leaching plant and the underground repository in Rönnskär. It's up and running since more or less one year, one and a half years.
We have expanded the nickel line in Harjavalta up to 370,000 tons, and we are also focusing a lot, of course, on these low-carbon metals. We have heard it from Åsa, we have heard it from Mikael. This is what we are talking about in Boliden, and this is what we are doing, and it feels good to do it. This is absolutely something that is striving towards our vision to be the most climate-friendly and respected metal provider in the world. Science-based targets, what does that mean really for Boliden smelters? Well, we launched this low-carbon metals already some time ago, and that was based on our internal raw materials coming from our mines that Stefan is providing concentrates from.
Now, when going into a far tougher target, this means that all concentrates will have to support this target, so both internal and external concentrates will be heading for this. A lot of collaboration is needed for us and our suppliers to really reach the target. We have some years to go, though, since this should be by 2030. Boliden's statement when calculating the CO2 footprint is really something that we want to be transparent with. We are not excluding anything. We are rather including than excluding things. There are no credits, there are no offsets for planting trees in the other countries or anything like that. We are not reducing credits for instance, sulfuric acid production, and so on.
This is really cradle-to-gate, no credits, no offsets, and this will be valid for all our products, copper and zinc until 2030. What does it really mean then in reality? Decarbonizing roadmap at smelters, it will be hard work. I would like to highlight at this stage that it is really the recycling of zinc that is our single largest emission point for our smelters. Well, the question is, why are we doing it? Could it be an easy point, easy way of just reducing, going away from recycling the zinc to reach our target? We don't believe so. I think the alternative for this electric arc furnace would be, I think, to landfill it.
That is nothing that fulfills the things that we are focusing on within Boliden and thinking about circular economy. For the rest, our zinc smelting is really something fantastic. Our capacity in Odda has been for a long time hydropower-based and really having a climate footprint that is close to zero. Our expansion now with this 150,000 tons that comes on top of that will be just as clean or even cleaner. The same thing more or less in Kokkola, where we have actually an improved energy grid that will improve our footprint even going forward.
We are also at the same time working with steam and heat improvements and going forward with the district heat solutions for that site. Copper and nickel. This will also improve by doing really basic things in the beginning, utilizing waste heat streams and in the end, replacing a fuel oil. We have, at this moment, started a project up in Skellefteå, for instance, called EcoLink, where we are sharing the system with Skellefteå city, where we are utilizing waste heat that we get out from our sulfuric acid plant, and that will be benefiting the district heating in the region.
When we are having shutdowns in the site, we can get heat back, and by that replacing oil for heating. In our lead production down in Bergsöe site, we have been working for quite some time with plastic separations and other things. Just at this moment, we have ongoing also a desulfurization project, which in the first hand will diminish sulfur emissions, but in the end also of course diminish the carbon dioxide emissions. Carbon dioxide emissions thinking about our Science Based Targets initiative, also already told about the 40% reduction. This is valid for the Scope 1 and 2.
In real tons really looking at this, the Scope 3 is actually quite a lot bigger. Scope 1 and 2 is about one third of the total emissions that we have, and Scope 3 is two thirds. I think also Åsa went through it pretty well what this includes, so regarding reduction agents and auxiliaries and raw material handling, et cetera. The Scope 2 is really the energy part of the CO2 emissions. Scope 3 then is demanding a lot of collaboration with our suppliers, and just meeting large miners from South America already now is really looking into what we are doing in Boliden and how to electrify trucks and other things in the mining equipment.
By that also of course, increasing efficiency of their installations and reducing fossil fuel usage. This is something that is a win-win, and I think that is a base actually what Boliden has been doing from the beginning, really increasing efficiency of their installations. Then at the same time, going into a more carbon or less carbon dioxide emission emitting operation. I promised to get back regarding the expansion that we are doing in Odda. This is actually a picture that was taken just some days ago. We have been working now since last summer by removing rock.
This is what we see in the picture, that we have come actually pretty far with groundworks, and now we are starting with the civil works from the beginning of the year. The whole installation here is really a world-class CO2 or low CO2 performing plant. Not only CO2, it's very, very efficient also thinking about the manning that we are including there. Those 150,000 tons that we are adding here will demand only some 50 full-time employees extra for managing this site. It has been, of course, a challenging situation to start this project. First of all, we had the COVID situation, and now coming into a situation with high inflation.
That means that we have had to increase the budget also with this for this project up to EUR 850 million, and that is due to inflation. For the rest, the project is actually working according to schedule, and we are fulfilling the timeline that we have set up here. Until now, we have spent some 27% of the budget, and we have still some 30% to be procured. 70% we have procured so far, and of that means that we have spent then 27% of the money. The decision about expanding this site, I think we see it in a very positive way.
Since this decision was taken, we see the importance of CO2 is getting even higher, even more important all the time. The energy contract that we have as basis for this installation or this expansion is really strong. This means that we have a very solid situation for many years ahead. We are working with this and intend to complete it during last quarter of 2024, and we'll be up and running at more or less full capacity in 2025. A little bit more, then about our carbon dioxide and the low-carbon metals that we are producing. There was already some questions about premiums for these products.
It has been a little bit challenging to work out an appetite for these metals, this low-carbon concept that we have. That has been ongoing now, but I would like to say that we have a breakthrough for this now. It starts to become a lot more interest from different suppliers or companies regarding decarbonizing their processes. This is a picture from the Dogger Bank C farm, which is one of the largest wind farms in the world. Utilizing our carbon footprint, the low-carbon copper in this is actually minimizing the carbon footprint of the plant with some 23,000 tons.
This includes some between 8,000 and 9,000 tons of copper going into that. The difference with utilizing Low-Carbon Copper from Boliden to the world average carbon footprint of a copper cathode, it makes this difference. This is really what it's all about. This is not minimizing our carbon footprint for the company, but for our customers really. Utilizing our Low-Carbon Copper is really something that benefits the ones that are using it. I'm also proud to announce that we are, since September now, taking part in a joint project together with Polestar. Polestar is having a project ongoing, the Polestar 0 project, where we are or they are targeting a climate neutral car by 2030.
This is something that we take part in together with some at least 15, 16 other companies. It shows also that we are on the right path and there is interest for our products in really concrete cases. We heard earlier about the question for nickel. Why aren't we coming out with low carbon nickel? Well, our performance for nickel is really good. This is showing the estimated emissions intensity to produce finished nickel metal. And we see that Boliden is coming out very good here in the lower part. This means that we have concentrates from our own mines treating it in a Harjavalta plant and then utilizing an external refinery.
The ones emitting more, the high emitters here, those are actually a lot based on the nickel pig iron and raw materials coming from Indonesia, which is then based on fossil fuel. The ones to the left are based on sulfides and clean material. I'm not a metallurgist, so I'm not really into all these details, but we are doing a great thing here, and I'd like to show a little bit how this is built up. We have a low Scope 1 in Boliden, and that is due to having concentrates from our fantastic Kevitsa mine, where Stefan is doing a lot of great things with electrification, automation, using fantastic low CO2 explosives, et cetera.
This is a great source for us and having it in Finland and direct low or efficient transports to Harjavalta makes this a good combination. Harjavalta, the nickel line that we have there. This is a low carbon or a very efficient low carbon emitting process that we have. It's called the DON process. It's an older explanation from the Outokumpu time where we call it direct Outokumpu nickel. This is a process that can avoid the utilization of converters.
Together then with the low Finnish grid mix for the electricity network is great and processing the nickel matte that is our product in refineries with low CO2 footprint gives us a level of 5.9 or at least under six. That is a great level I would like to say. Why aren't we coming out with low carbon nickel? Well, it is a matter of that we don't have the full chain. We are working with it and have to come out with a cooperation with a final refinery. I mentioned about the nickel expansion.
We have expanded the part in the process in Harjavalta, and this was done together with regular maintenance, so we got a pretty cost-efficient expansion. This is also based on new drying technology for the concentrate, where we can avoid utilization of fossil fuel for heating the concentrate drier. We have a new electric furnace equipped with automated matte handling, which is then again very efficient and something that is safe for operators to use. Then regarding the pace of this, it has been a challenging project. We are not really on the level that we should be, but also implementing new technology is sometimes a little bit demanding.
From short terms, we are up on the capacity that we have said to be, and then now it's to work with OEE and really get it on a stable level for longer time. Now, we will have a trip for some of you will take part in the Harjavalta trip, and we have some other good things also being done there. This is actually in Port of Pori, where we are implementing kind of state-of-the-art concentrate handling. Today, the handling of concentrate in that harbor is a little bit diverse. It's a lot of movements, and there are also some environmental impact with dusting and other things when emptying the vessels coming there.
Together with building this concentrate handling, we will also increase the draft of the harbor, so we can come in with far larger vessels, and that will increase the efficiency of handling this. We are implementing this automated concentrate value determination directly at port, which will hasten up and makes us actually a more valued customer and someone that can come back with the value determination in a fast way, which is expected by the market today. Streamlining the concentrate handling, that is shortening the lead time significantly, which is then valued by our suppliers. Project is ongoing at this moment, and this picture is just also taken some days ago here, which is really the tower where the value determination is done.
For the ones taking part of the trip to Harjavalta will see a little bit more, well, at least see, maybe not in real life, but some movie about this. Coming to a conclusion about the trip that we are on in smelters, I think we can say that we are doing something great here. Our base for profitability is the complex raw material that has been in that way for a long time. We are utilizing partly clean materials, clean raw materials coming from, mainly from our internal mines, and that clean raw material is then giving the possibility to add on a little bit more complex raw materials, which in the end increases the profitability of our raw materials.
We have an efficient cooperation between our smelters, and then that means that we can increase and really raise up the recovery rates between the sites or the total recovery to a fantastic level due to the cooperation between our smelters. Our operations are really sustainable, and that together with the underground repository that makes the possibility to treat these really ugly concentrates, but to store the ugly elements in a safe way in the repository is giving us a great benefit. I mentioned the low carbon metals. Those we are really proud of. Together with all this thing, we are for sure benefiting and contributing to the vision of Boliden to have to be the most climate friendly and respected metal supplier in the world.
Ladies and gentlemen, that opens up our Q&A session for Mr. Peltonen. Who has the first question? It's Christian Kopfer, Handelsbanken.
Thanks. Thanks for that, Olof. Thanks for the presentation here. On the Green Zinc project that you have in Odda, you already mentioned that CapEx is going up because of inflation, and I guess also operating costs will come up as well on the inflation. But on your return on investment, maybe other factors have improved. My question is, the return on the investment for that project, is that still as good as it was from the beginning?
As I said, we are very happy with the decision taken, and we are not really explaining the real levels. It is fulfilling the demands that we have within Boliden for sure.
You have commented on it previously that it is meaningfully ahead of your return on investment target, I think [crosstalk] 10%, yeah?
IRR level is
Is that still relevant?
Sorry?
Is that still relevant?
Absolutely.
Okay.
I think we have a stronger case now than we had from the beginning, actually.
That's good. How will the ramp-up process be from Odda when it's starting up in, was it Q4 of 2024?
Q4. We will be moving on. It is of course a complex project with different parts that we'll be taking into use gradually. Then in Q4 we should have the full line up and running and that will be then should be a pretty fast ramp-up during 2025.
You expect [crosstalk].
Ramping up during 2024 and then more or less full production in 2025.
Okay. Thanks.
Sylvain Brunet, Exane BNP Paribas, please.
Thanks, Olof. On third-party concentrate, could you give us a sense of how much is that in terms of your feed you're treating? As you were touching on complex concentrate, some sort of order of magnitude of how much you're charging as a premium to treat those material, please.
Well, the premiums, maybe we don't tell that much about, but our internal feed for our smelters is about 40%.
Thank you.
Okay, we have a question from the web, and it's from Morten Enggaard, Jyske Bank. You talked about a large Scope 3 reduction at this Dogger Bank project for one of your clients. How does this benefit Boliden?
Well, I mentioned it, I think, during the presentation also, but good to highlight that this is not in the end benefiting the CO2. The Scope 3 is really not benefiting our calculations, but it is a great example of how this benefits the OEMs, the original equipment manufacturer. Utilizing Low-Carbon Copper in cabling and other installation is really minimizing the carbon footprint of that project with 23,000 tons just by our part in it.
We have two question from Jason Fairclough here at Bank of America. First of all, earlier you launched this new plant up in Rönnskär, the leach plant. Is it profitable now?
The leach plant is not running on full capacity. We have a very aggressive chemistry there, and there is some certain part of that leach plant that is not full up and running, and we are running with the capacity just below 50%. The raw material that we are using basically for that is old stored ugly material that is on the site, and this gives free metals for the equipment. We are not on a capacity level, but profitability, I think, we are by that not on the level that we would like to be.
He also says you earlier promised to increase the copper feed quite a lot in Rönnskär. What's the situation regarding that earlier promise?
We are following the plan that we have. We have had some hiccups during this year. Looking into the budgeted figure and estimations, we are going to fulfill and exceed those targets that we have had in there.
Excellent. Any questions from the audience at this stage? Yes. Viktor Trollsten, Danske Bank, please.
Thank you so much. Could you maybe discuss a bit regarding the recycling opportunity within smelting? I think you talked a lot about it several years ago, but could you update us on recycling in Rönnskär in particular in terms of profitability versus, let's call it virgin smelting?
I think the composition of the raw material has changed. When this project was done many years back, there were a lot more metals included in the secondary raw material coming into the site. Now the metal content is going down, more plastics instead. In the end, we are of course maximizing what we can, but that is based on terms and of course the total profitability that we are having.
On recycling, if I'm not mistaken, that's more energy intensive than the, let's say conventional process. Am I correct in that? Does that also giving you new targets of reducing CO2 in total? Does that mean that you're not looking to expand recycling ahead?
No, I think the energy, it's the secondary raw material contains energy itself, at least, electronic waste because it got the plastic when it comes, and that is being burnt then in the process and that gives the energy to that. Comparing them to our concentrates, which are sulfur-based, and that is then also utilized as fuel for the process. I can't really say exactly the relation between this.
I think we have time for two more questions here from the audience. We have Johannes Grunselius, the DNB / Den Norske Bank, please.
Yes. I have a question on the Odda expansion. Sort of how much synergies are involved between Odda and your big zinc mine in Ireland, Tara? I'm thinking about the new project is supposed to enable you to take out more lead in the process. I mean, is it important that you get the feed from Odda, or could it come from someone else?
Feed from Tara.
Feed from Tara, yeah. Sorry.
Yeah. No, it can come from anywhere. Of course, the internal supply sources are okay. I think Tara is a very clean concentrate for us. It doesn't contain a lot of other valuables, free metals and other things. That is, on that side, a clean and a good base for us. We don't see that as a go or no-go, in a way.
It doesn't really change the sort of calculations for you on Odda?
No.
No, okay.
Okay, I think we have time for one final question. Ioannis Masvoulas, Morgan Stanley, please.
Hi. Just one point to clarify around the recycling of zinc. You mentioned that it's a CO2 challenge. Can you talk about it in a bit more detail? What's driving that higher CO2 intensity, and what sort of avenues are you looking at in terms of improving that profile?
Well, this process is based on a kind of fuming process that we have up in our Rönnskär plant, and that is based on a chemical process, well, a reduction process, but where we use coal. That coal is, well, not maybe utilized to 100% for the reduction process. This is a process that has been there for quite some time, and I think we are overcharging coal to the process. Just when looking at it on a superficial level, I think we say that only 20% of the coal is going to the reduction process, and 80% is going for heat. In that sense, the fuming is important for our heat balance in the site, but really not that much for the reduction. Here we could, for instance, go into electrifying and making sure that we have the heat balance in the site. Yeah. Well, that's superficial answer to this, I think.
Thank you.
Okay, ladies and gentlemen, we need to move on. Thank you very much, Mr. Peltonen. You will be back at the Q&A panel session as well.
Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, it's time for our final presentation. It's the CFO of Boliden, Håkan Gabrielsson. Håkan, I promise I will not tell you anything about your looks.
I'm grateful for that, Olof.
Welcome.
Thank you, and good afternoon. It's great to be back at the live Capital Markets Day after a while. I hope you're finding it useful so far. What I'll do is I'll do a financial overview of Boliden. As you're well aware, we have a strong financial position, and that really is the foundation both for the sustainability journey that my colleagues have been talking about and the strong returns. Let me start by looking back at our performance. This is a slide on the left-hand side with our return on capital employed over the last 10 years. We are currently at 27.5% return on capital employed, and that is rolling 12 months up until the end of September, so a really good number. Our averages over the last 10 years is 16%.
If you look at the chart to the right-hand side, you can see both our business areas that are both performing well. Smelters is currently at 19%, and most of the period here you see that they're ranging between 15%-20% return on capital employed, which I think is good for a capital-intensive business. Mines are currently rolling 12 months up at 37% return on capital employed, which is quite impressive. It is a bit more volatile over time, but strong returns. One point I like to make about this is that when you put the two together, they stabilize the result. Putting it all together, you can see that Boliden generates stable and strong returns.
With that picture about a little bit about the past, I'd like to move on to a couple of areas that have been on the agenda very much for the last quarterly reports that we have released. First one is inflation. With inflation, I'm basically repeating the message that we have given in the Q3 report quite recently. We are running at about 20% inflation year-over-year, measured in Swedish krona. This excludes costs for personnel and costs for electricity. I'll come back to those two separately. Where we're seeing the inflation is mainly in chemicals, in energy like oil, for example, diesel, in explosives and similar areas. The dollar rate is also an important component of this.
Again, this is inflation measured in Swedish krona, and in the same period, the dollar to SEK has strengthened by about 22%, so that of course also is a driver behind inflation. Inflation that we see on CapEx projects is on similar levels as the 20% on OpEx. Looking about in the labor side, which is not included in the 20% above, labor negotiations are ongoing basically in most of our markets. In Norway, there is an agreement in place at 4.5%. We expect agreements in Finland, Ireland, and Sweden to be concluded somewhere between Q4, Q1, and Q2 of next year. We see inflation happening across the sector. When we look at cash cost curves and similar, we have a continued strong competitive position.
In the competitive position, one important area is electricity. It is an important cost item for us, as you know, not least in the zinc smelters and so on. We're spending about SEK 600 million per quarter in electricity. The chart on the slide, it illustrates the share of our consumption that is covered by long-term fixed-price contracts. As you can see from the slide, we have about 80% of our consumption secured for the next two years. In a longer perspective, we put it until 2035 on this slide, we have about 60% covered by long-term contracts. The estimated price points or the estimated prices for the entire portfolio is in the mid-thirties, and I'm talking about EUR per megawatt hour.
I mean, these contracts were signed a few years back before the recent price hikes. It is a mix of pure fixed contracts and some contracts with consumer price index adjustments. All together, for the whole period, we expect prices to be around mid-30s EUR per megawatt hour. I also want to highlight that this is supply contracts with strong counterparts that all have own electricity production. We see the counterpart risk as limited. The challenges we have are in Tara and Bergsöe, where the current fixed price agreement expires at the end of this year. They would be in the gray area in this slide. I think this has helped us a lot financially, and it is an important strong point going forward as well with the current market climate.
Another topic that has been on the agenda, at least for the last quarter, is working capital, where we have tied about SEK 5.9 billion year to date. We've tied SEK 5.9 billion working capital so far this year, up until the end of Q3. Out of that number, 1.8 is a function of price increases. When prices go up, we tie more working capital, and when prices come down, we release working capital. But we have about SEK 4 billion that is increased volumes in our capital. The main component of that volume increase is firstly, we have about SEK 1 billion more in nickel concentrates than we typically have. That is a strategic decision not to sell nickel concentrate. Given the, I should say, uncertainty on the nickel market, we've decided to keep that volumes for now.
We've also built about SEK 2 billion inventory volumes in our copper smelters. This is mainly gold and copper, and there are a number of reasons for that. One is a high share of gold-rich concentrates, and a second one is some process disturbances that have reduced the processing of these materials more than expected. We have action plans in place to reduce during Q4, and we're doing our utmost to take most of this material out already in Q4. We also have a SEK 1 billion increase in trade receivables. This is very much a seasonal effect where we have a lot of spot sales towards the end of the year. This should come down as well when we approach the year-end.
I also want to highlight that the inventory is hedged, so there is no price risk in the inventory that we have tied. Another part for Q4 is what Stefan referred to, the exploration rights in the Kylylahti area. Now, typically, we don't have exploration rights valued in our balance sheets, but this came in through an acquisition of the Kylylahti mine back in 2014. Now we have been carrying out extensive exploration in the area, but we have not found a mineralization of sufficient economic interest. As Stefan talked about, we are now reprioritizing our exploration activities going forward, and we've decided to write off the entire asset on our balance sheet. This will have an impact of about EUR 24.4 million in the Q4 EBIT.
Since there is a tax implication on this, the net profit impact will be slightly lower, just somewhere slightly below EUR 20 million. That will be recorded in the Q4 results. With that, if we then continue to CapEx, I mean, that is an area that we typically discuss quite a lot. In the same way as in the last capital markets day, I'm going to dive into some more detail about the capital expenditure guidance that we've given for next year. Starting now, we grouped this in four categories: mine-sustaining, replacement, what we call stay-in-business CapEx, and expansions or strategic projects. Starting with mine sustaining, this will be slightly above SEK 3.5 billion in 2023. This then excludes the big dam projects that we have in Aitik.
This mine-sustaining number, it's primarily stripping in the open pit mines, it's underground development in the underground mines, and it's the successive raising of the dams. Looking at just numbers, the bulk of it all is stripping in Aitik and Kevitsa. This is an area that has been impacted a lot by inflation. There is a lot of diesel and explosives going into this number, so it has increased compared to where we stood a year back. If we look beyond 2023, Stefan talked about an increase in stripping in Aitik. The number that we have for 2023 still means stripping slightly below the ore production. We're looking at, just to put a number on it, from 2023 to about 2026, we expect an increase in the volumes stripped by about 35%.
On the other hand, Kevitsa, unless we take a decision to extend the mine with a fifth pushback, those stripping volumes would start to taper off significantly from 2026 and onwards. That should give you a feeling about where this is going over time. Replacement investments, that's, you know, purely replacing our existing asset base. We're planning for SEK 2.5 billion in 2023. It's slightly up compared to previous years, again, with inflation. About half in each business area, but there is some flexibility in timing, and it varies a bit over time between the business areas. We see this as basically stable going forward, and this is one area where a big part of our CO2-related investments will come. We replace a fossil-driven truck with a battery truck and similar.
This is within this frame that we're giving here, we'll cover a big part of the investments that are needed for the new CO2 targets. If we continue to a heading that we invented for last capital markets day, stay in business CapEx. I'm not sure if anyone else uses that term, but we see that in addition to replacing assets one-to-one and just stripping in the mines, there is an element of investments that are needed to stay relevant in the business, to get new permits, to be able to extend mines competitively and so on. Last time we talked about this, it was also SEK 1.5 billion, and we're expecting something similar here. This is driven by financial return and market requirements, and a large part of this is environmentally related projects.
We expect this to be roughly stable over time. Also, a part of this will address CO2 matters. Adding the three categories that I have been talking about together, we are at SEK 7.5 billion. This is about SEK 1 billion up to the 6.5 we've been talking about in previous meetings. That is basically entirely connected to inflation. If we finalize the investment section here with the expansion of the strategic projects that we have, currently that means for me the Odda expansion, the Aitik dam project, the SEK 5 billion dam project, and the Kristineberg extension that we talked about previously. For next year, it's a heavy year for those investments.
We're planning for close to SEK 7.5 billion, and that will take most of these projects very close to being completed. The total cost for these projects are unchanged. There is nothing new in what I'm saying now or what we said in the Q3 report about that. When we leave 2023, that means that altogether for these projects, there will be about SEK 4 billion left to spend for 2024. There is, with the size of these projects, there is of course some uncertainty what will fall into each year between 2022 and 2023, and also 2023 and 2024. Here you get the order of magnitude. I also often get the question about what projects, what new projects could we potentially announce going forward?
The first three were three that I mentioned already at last Capital Markets Day. Tara Deep, Stefan indicated a decision time at about 2025. We talked about 2024 in the last meeting. A pushback five in Kevitsa. We would like to take the decision about 2024 to be able to plan for it properly. Laver could be a great mine, but the decision time for this is still uncertain. We're still on it, so to speak. There are some other areas which could lead to investments, maybe not in the same order of magnitude as the ones that we've been talking about, but we are looking into waste management.
We have a couple of our tailings facilities that will be full, let's say, in the late 2020s, and sooner or later, we'll have to look in at them, like Tara and Boliden area. We're also looking into some interesting, profitable ways of converting waste to product. There is some time out, but there are potentially some interesting business cases in that. Finally, even if I don't have any good examples near term, we could see something in the CO2 area as well. Although in CO2, most of the CapEx that we see will be kind of a regular ongoing replacement to stay in business CapEx. We don't really see a material increase in the CapEx level over time. With that, moving over just a few words on the financing side. We're happy about our financing.
We have a robust financing in place to support our sustainability journey. We have at the end of the third quarter a low net debt of about SEK 3.7 billion. We have a loan duration of 3.5 years. An interest duration of 1.9 years and an average interest rate of 2.4%. Obviously, it has come up a bit compared to the numbers we have been talking about historically, but still a competitive number. Since our last quarterly report, we have signed a new loan with SEK, Swedish Export Credit . It's a total of SEK 1.8 billion, and there is a process to replace some loans from SEK that become short in the first half of next year.
It's currently not utilized, so it's an available credit. During Q3, we issued green bonds, our first green bonds, and that was to support the Odda investment. We're happy to be early in the base metal space to issue green bonds. We're also happy that it was such a great interest from the capital markets in this bond issue. It's of course related to our strong track record in ESG over years, but we're happy that so many investors want to take part in financing our continued sustainability journey and Odda in particular. With the story about new CO2 targets that you've heard from all presenters today, and with our good experiences in the green bond issue, it's perhaps no surprise that our ambition is to further strengthen our green financing component over time. It's a natural step.
With that, I just want to finalize the presentation by repeating our strong commitment to the capital allocation framework. I think you've seen this picture before. It has been with us for more than 10 years, and it is serving us very well to deliver strong returns through business cycles. We're happy about that. With that, Olof.
Yes. Thank you, Håkan. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, that opens up the Q&A session for our CFO, Håkan Gabrielsson. Who has the first question? Yes, it's gentleman there. Yes.
Yes. Hi, it's Adrian here at ABG. Just a quick question on the electricity timeline that you showed going to 2035.
Mm-hmm.
Are you allowed to say anything about which specific assets have their electricity exposure partly or fully hedged until 2035?
Sorry. Can you repeat the question? I got a bit distracted. Which
You mentioned that Tara and Bergsöe are probably in the worst situation.
Yes.
Which assets are on the other side that have their electricity hedged up until 2035?
It's fairly evenly distributed. We got most of our main sites covered to 2020-2035 and beyond. The percentages vary a bit, but we're in a good position. It's those two that are something of an issue with the electricity situation that we have in Ireland and in the southern part of Sweden.
Okay, thanks.
Alexander Vivall, Pareto.
Thank you. You mentioned regarding potential announcements in the future, waste-to-product projects. Can you elaborate a little bit on what that could be and sort of-
I think most of them are too early to go into a lot of detail. As an industry, it's always a priority to take whatever waste we have in the end of the project and try to turn it into something useful that is sellable. There are several different areas that we're looking into, but I don't want to sort of highlight a specific one because we're not really that close, if you see it that way.
A few years down the road?
I think so, yes. Mm-hmm.
Thank you.
Question from the gentleman there, please.
Ari Mäkelä from BNP.
Mm-hmm.
Congratulations on the energy management. Fantastic.
Thank you.
Fantastic job on the energy management. Just two questions on that. Can you explain or are you able to explain what is the average tenor of the contracts? And then second question, is that due to the recent volatility, did you face any sort of heightened collateral demands?
No, I mean, these are supply contracts. So, basically these are fixed price contracts with stable energy producers where we buy and pay energy over time. Most of them are, I mean, it could be wind power, hydropower, long-term agreements that cover the entire period. So these are not a combination of short-term contracts, but a number of long-term contracts. Then there is some short-term initiatives in the next, let's say, 12-24 months to cover that part. These are, you know, good long-term supply contracts.
Excellent. We have a question from the web, and it says, like this. It's from Krishan Agarwal, and he works for Citibank. Thanks for the detailed breakdown on CapEx. Is it fair to assume that recurring CapEx for Boliden in the next three to five years is SEK 7.5 billion? And should growth CapEx be on top of that?
That is a correct assumption, and thanks for the question. That is a correct assumption. Of course, what we've learned over the years is that inflation also has an impact on CapEx both ways.
We have a follow-up from Liam Fitzpatrick, Deutsche Bank. Thanks again for this detailed explanation of CapEx in the near term. Will we get in the future CapEx for many years ahead? How does Boliden look upon that issue?
Well, thanks, Liam. That's a good question, and I suspect that you already know the answer. I mean, we think a lot about CapEx, and one of the best way to create value is to find good CapEx projects. And also priorities for us is to keep our asset base competitive and in good position. I don't think we'll guide with numbers billions longer than one year at a go. With this, we're trying at least to give an image or give a feeling of where we're heading.
Okay. You will get more questions during the panel session.
Sure.
I think we have one or two more here in the room maybe. Christian Kopfer, Handelsbanken.
Thanks. Yeah, I think you showed, Håkan, on the return on capital employed for smelters, and I agree it's very strong returns, given the capital intensity and so on. You have improved it a lot the last five years, yeah? How much—I mean, maybe a little bit difficult question. You don't need to answer it detail, but approximately how much of the improvement is assignable to what you can control yourself, i.e. how much is driven by external factors like, you know, currencies, et cetera, et cetera?
Yeah. I appreciate that I don't have to answer it because it's actually quite difficult. No, in mines, if you take that as a comparison, we have our production, and then the metal prices are given. In smelting, it's much more a matter of putting yourself in a position to benefit from good prices in various market segments. For example, working with complex materials, et cetera. Therefore it's a bit difficult to split. I mean, we've opted for certain choices, and those choices have paid off in terms of good terms and conditions and good production from expansions. It's actually difficult. It's not that I have a number that I'm not willing to disclose, but it's difficult to answer in another way.
Some of it at least.
Okay. Who has the last question for Mr. Gabrielsson? Yes, Ioannis Masvoulas, Morgan Stanley, please.
Thank you. Just going back to the point around mining sustaining CapEx, because on the one hand, you're saying that SEK 7.5 billion overall is the right number, but within that, we're gonna see the mine sustaining CapEx component rising over the coming years as the Aitik stripping picks up. Are there any offsetting items or-
Okay, maybe that I should clarify. The 7.5, to that you have to add a certain amount of increase in Aitik for 2024, 2025, 2026. From that time you will see a decrease also in the Kevitsa mine. That is correct. I mean, SEK 7.5 billion is the 2023 level.
Got it. Thank you.
It would probably creep up a little bit from that level.
Excellent. Thank you very much Håkan.
Thank you.
Okay. Now we will have a logistical challenge here because we will have the whole of Boliden group management on scene here. I think we will fix that. Thanks. The idea is that we will have a panel Q&A session. Once again, it's perfectly fine to ask questions both here in Stockholm and via the web. Are you ready?
Absolutely.
Excellent. Fantastic. I think we go with ladies first, and it's from a gentleman called Patrick Jones . He works for Resco Asset Management, and it's for Åsa Jackson. If you were to highlight the most important thing to reach your new CO2 target, the most important initiative, which one would it be?
Thank you. Good question. I think that it is definitely electrification. As we've seen in both Stefan's and Daniel's presentation, mine roadmap to reach the targets are very much related to electrification. But also there are some things in smelters, as we saw and what you have described, Daniel, that is related to electrification. If I would say one thing, it would be electrification.
Excellent. We take another one from the web while we're moving on, and it's from Daniel Shigemura, and it's for Mr. Peltonen. It is regarding your premiums, the premiums you get on your Low-Carbon Copper and zinc. Can you please quantify them today and where they will be in, let's say, five years' time? Where will the premiums be?
It's a very good question, difficult to quantify though. We are building up a market here, and just looking into the example of the Dogger Bank is really creating kind of appetite for this. In the end, we believe that we will have higher premiums than we have today. There is a small premium, but this is something that we expect to grow in a good way.
Okay. Well, we have questions from the audience. Once again, Viktor Trollsten, Danske Bank, please. Thanks.
Yes. Thank you. I would like to come back to the previous question regarding the Odda project and potential returns. Mikael, I think that you have previously said that returns are still the same, despite higher CapEx. Could you please just, you know, clarify if that's, you know, still the case and if that means that you will raise or increase your, you know, planning prices on zinc-related products?
I would say that, without having done the calculations in detail, our sense is exactly as we said before, that actually the calculation looks better now than it did before. The basis is of course what you've seen there, that we have a fixed power price contract, which is the biggest part of operating cost. Then, generally speaking, if you just take the update that we did last year that you saw on our planning prices, and if you on top of that add kind of soft factors around the fact that there might be less zinc smelting from other of our competitors in Europe. If you weigh all these things in without going into any numbers, the whole project feels even better than it did when we took it.
Okay. Yeah, I guess what I'm a bit after is, you know, if you increase planning prices, how would that also spill over on the Tara Deep project? I do not remember the cutoff grade in Tara, but you have mentioned that you would like to have 40,000,000 tons in resources or something like that. How much would Tara Deep resources come up if you increase zinc prices, et cetera?
You have to remember there is an inflation as well, and a good thing about Odda is that Odda will, for the largest part of its cost, not be so much affected by inflation. Whereas, something like Tara Deep would be affected by inflation.
Okay. No, I see. Thank you.
Okay, let's take from the web here as well, and it's for Mr. Romedahl, and it's from Daniel Major, UBS. Please remind us, when will Liikavaara, the satellite pit to the Aitik mine be up and running, and how will it affect grades?
It will be up and running from mid-2024, and, I mean, it is included in the graph that you have for Aitik. If you look at that, it's what you can get from both Aitik and Liikavaara at the same time.
He actually asked which quarter, if I see it correctly here.
Yeah. Okay. Mid 2024 could be end of Q2 or beginning of Q3, I guess.
Okay. Excellent. Let's go for another quarter question from the web. It's from Amos Fletcher, and it's Barclays, and it's intended for our CFO, Håkan Gabrielsson. What's your current interest level in M&A given how your leverage is, and do you have a competitive advantage in this sense now?
Thanks, Amos. A good question. Well, first of all, I think it's fair to say that in order to do good deals in M&A, you have to work on it constantly. It is true that we've seen prices, especially in copper, and the price of the deals that have been announced to be higher than we can motivate given our views on the market. I would say that it's, as always, the main priorities are to run our business in a good way and to find interesting brownfield expansions. M&A is something that we're constantly looking at, and let's see when the opportunity opens up.
A question there, please.
Hi, it's Justin Baron from JBM. If you just can describe the sort of dynamics of how you allocate capital between the smelters and the mines in light of the different returns profiles and CO2 emissions and fluctuations in the predictions of the profitability?
Do I take it? Well, in practice, it's perhaps how should I say? Easier than expected. I mean, what we want is good projects that can deliver good improvements. We have limitations in permits. We have limitation in engineering resources, et cetera. It's rarely the capital side that is the limiting factor. We try to run the two business areas at an arm's length principle as standalone businesses and allocate capital to good projects. If we have a you know a greater cash flow than what we can spend on projects, then it will be dividended out. That's so far we have seen quite a few conflicts of capital allocation in that sense.
Another question for Åsa Jackson from Daniel Shigemura at Credit Suisse, and that is, when do you expect to get your Science Based Targets initiative approved, and when will you start, accounting according to that standard?
What we have understood in our contacts with the SBTi, we have sent in our application just now, and with the number of applications they are handling, we are to expect their validation process to be done approximately in Q3 next year. Somewhere there. We will start reporting our new targets now in Q1 2023.
Excellent. Question from Jason Fairclough, Bank of America, and it's for Mr. Romedahl. You indicated some optimism regarding the Kylylahti tailings dam, but you didn't say any timeframe. Can you elaborate on that one, please?
Yeah. We're looking into what we can do with the cobalt, as I mentioned, but we don't have any time schedule. We try to figure out some kind of industrial, what do you call it, way to do it that makes sense. We don't have a solution for where to go with it. I can't tell you about any time schedule for it, unfortunately.
Okay, we have some questions from the audience. Now it's Sjoerd de Koning from Lansdowne Partners.
Thank you very much. You didn't talk much about Laver today, I guess because it's very far away. At the same time, there's an old study that you published some time ago which suggests that it's a really attractive mine. I think it's actually the biggest unmined copper deposit in Europe at the moment. My limited understanding of Swedish politics suggests that the Greens are, for the first time in a very long period, not in government, and the treaty agreement actually talks a little bit about reforms around sort of permitting. Do you think that the stakeholder and the various stakeholder incentives here are sufficiently in line to see some sort of, you know, breakthrough change that pertains to permitting? If so, what sort of timeline could we expect for Laver if we're wanting to be optimistic?
I can maybe take that one. I would just say that already the old government before the election we had did initiate a investigation into changing potentially the law coupled to permitting, which is. It has to do exactly with the Laver case, and it's linked to how to interpret European law in connection with Swedish law. That investigation has not been stopped by the new government. It's going on. We expect them to deliver some kind of idea by Q2. That's the time plan that they have, but how long it takes from them delivering their idea until you will have a change in the law, who knows? We are positive.
Mikael, while you're on air, it's a question from Krishan Agarwal. He works for Citibank, and the question is regarding Boliden's cash situation. It goes like this: Am I correct to assume that the next three to five years are going to be investment heavy for Boliden, leaving the free cash flow entirely up to commodity prices?
Well, you know, I can answer the first part that, yes, we are in investment intensive. You've seen the number for 2023, and you've gotten some hint about 2024 as well here, so that's gonna be intensive. Then I would say that our cash flow is always up to the mercy of commodity prices, so that is true. It's always been true, and it's true now as well.
Okay, we have another one from the web, and then it's for our CFO, Håkan Gabrielsson, and it's a follow-up from Amos Fletcher, Barclays. For Håkan, you don't specify CapEx way in the future, but do you have an absolute ceiling for group CapEx?
We have not specified an absolute ceiling for ourselves. I mean, the SEK 15 billion we're looking at now is the highest number that we have. What we do every time we take a big investment decision, every time we prepare a business plan, is that we do plenty of simulations to stress test the balance sheet, and to look at other, you know, aspects. That, in every situation, gives a limit, but it's not a fixed limit that is decided and unchanged over time.
Yes, we have a question from the audience. Johannes Grunselius, DNB, Den Norske Bank, please.
Yes, I would like to go back to one of the first slides that you presented, Mikael. You mentioned favorable but more favorable smelter terms 2023 versus 2022, I suppose. Could you give some color on that? You know, is it more on the zinc side than the copper side, and which components are we talking about, and maybe a magnitude? That would be super.
For those of you who don't know, of course you know that there will be a zinc benchmark TC. It's typically set sometime in February. We're not part of that discussion, so we are only a price taker in that sense as well. We can only kind of, you know, both think ourselves and hear rumors what others say, but I'm pretty clear that that's gonna go up. That's a good start. This also copper TCs are likely to go up, maybe not as much, but also likely to go up. Also once again speculating. The other thing that has already come out, which is ongoing 'cause right now is the season for setting the premiums for next year, and I'm pretty sure that the premiums for both copper and zinc will go up.
Okay, we have time for one more question from the web and two more questions from the audience. The first one is from the web, and it's for Mr. Peltonen. It is from Ian Rousseau. He works for Barclays. You had some production issues in your nickel line in Harjavalta. Are they history now?
No, they are not history. We are working heavily with optimizing this nickel dryer and getting it up to overall equipment efficiency to those levels that we would like to have it. This is, as I mentioned a little bit, new technology that we are doing with the countercurrent heat and drying it in a new way that is in the end really something beneficial for our CO2 carbon footprint and so on. We are not happy with it at this stage.
Okay, two brief questions from Stockholm, please. Adrian Gilani, ABG.
A question on the topic of wage inflation. There was actually an article just a few hours ago in Dagens Industri saying that the miners in Aitik are planning to demand a 15% wage increase in 2023. I'm not sure if you've even had time to read the article, and I understand you won't talk too specifically about labor negotiations, but do you have any thoughts on that figure that is being reported?
Who should answer?
I think that's more a reflection of what should we call it? Some internal union tensions.
Internal union tensions. That was a new word. Okay, we have a time for a final question here from the audience. Yes. Thank you. Microphone?
Thank you. My question is for Mr. Peltonen. You showed how low the carbon intensity of nickel is with the graph. Why isn't nickel marketed as low carbon nickel as you do with copper and zinc? Is there a certain ceiling that you would like to achieve in lowering the carbon intensity before labeling it as low carbon nickel?
Problem is a little bit that we are not having the full chain, so we don't have the final refined nickel in our own hands, so that's a cooperation with the refinery in the end, and that part is not in there. We have the raw material, and we have, of course, the grid mix, and we have the smelter, which is producing the same nickel matte.
Thank you, all. Please give a big hand for the group management. Then it's time for our presidents and CEO, Mikael Staffas, to give his concluding remarks. Please do, Mikael.
Well, thank you, Olof, and thank you all for having come here today and listen, and I hope that you feel more enlightened and you have feel more educated than you were coming here. What I hope that you've taken away from this discussion, just to remember around that, also I talked about sustainability. We are 14-year fatality free. It is absolutely unique in our industry. Our industry, also the best companies, the ones that are a part of ICMM, have roughly 50 fatalities every year split between the 27 companies. We have 14-year fatality free. Also talked about the CO2 targets. We've had all those discussion, and you talked about that. The question that kind of has come but hasn't maybe really been answered, but I could give some clarity on, what will this cost to us?
Well, that all depends what you think going forward about the cost of CO2, what will the emissions rights cost. It also depends on what you think about premiums. Just to give you a sense of order of magnitude around how this works, if we assume for a while that the premiums will be zero, but we assume that the cost of CO2 will be 100 EUR per ton, which I think is in line with what the EU Commission is working with, then most of our activities that we have are NPV positive. I.e., there is not really any cost to this at all. You've heard from our two operating officers who run our two business areas. You've heard about Daniel.
You heard him going on about how the strong development's been, the strong results, the update on Odda, and you also heard me answering the question about what I think about Odda and how it's positioned now given what has happened in recent times. We also maybe did not talk so much about it, but I would like to emphasize again, the complex raw material strategy that we have worked for many years in our smelters is actually a very big key component to the fact that we're making so much money. All concentrates are not the same, and our ability to both figure out where we make money and then being able to source those concentrates where we make money, and those are, of course, the ones where those suppliers cannot find other smelters that will do it, at least not on the terms that we can do.
It has mainly to do with how we treat penalty elements and how we can handle them, and therefore take them with relatively good rebate. It's also about the other end of things, how we can have very high recoveries of especially precious metals, which means that we get lots of precious metals in, which is very profitable for us, but also, as Håkan has pointed out, does drive up the working capital a little bit as the gold is in the process. Stefan talked about what we've done, where we've come, what the conclusions around it, how we've implemented the global industry standard on tailings management. That is a big effort just from an administrative point of view, and it's also led us to do improvements in our Aitik dam. These are improvements that would have had to be done at some stage anyway.
We knew that, but the new tailings standard forced us to do it quicker than we had thought before, but we talked about that before. He also talked about the technical developments. He spoke about exploration. Just to be very clear, we are not reducing our exploration activities. We're rather increasing them. We're focusing maybe more on nickel than we have done historically, but we are not gonna continue in the Outokumpu area. In itself, not a big decision. We close exploration offices, you know, every year somewhere, but this was because of the way that it was accounted for that we had to talk about that.
Håkan talked about what maybe has turned out at least for a while to be one of our strongest assets, which is the power portfolio that we have and the way that we can have a strong and well-planned cost position regarding power on that. He also worked around the inflation number. The inflation number, of course, makes things very difficult 'cause we see now the costs going up as they will for all of our competitors as well. Exactly how this plays out in higher metal prices, of course, we don't know. In the end of the day, it should push up also the metal prices, and our margins are hopefully safe. With those few words as a summary, it was great seeing you all again. Some of you will continue with us to Harjavalta, and we will be able to talk and chat much more. For those of you online and for those of you in the room here who will not continue to Harjavalta, I would thank you a lot for the attention. It was great seeing you all. Thank you.